Tag: Ed Milliband

Britain: Time To Go Back To Coal

Among our “climate leader” jurisdictions, Britain is a serious contender for the top spot. Sure Germany got started earlier than Britain, with the so-called “Energiewende” going back to the 1990s; and upstart American states like California and New York each think that their own hair shirt energy restrictions should qualify them for the number one position.

From The Manhattan Contrarian

By Francis Menton

Among our “climate leader” jurisdictions, Britain is a serious contender for the top spot. Sure Germany got started earlier than Britain, with the so-called “Energiewende” going back to the 1990s; and upstart American states like California and New York each think that their own hair shirt energy restrictions should qualify them for the number one position.

But Britain’s suite of policies in the aggregate is hard to top: mandatory Net Zero goals set by statute; madcap buildout of wind and solar electricity generation; shuttering of generation from coal and natural gas; refusal to permit drilling in the North Sea; complete ban on fracking. The Energy Minister of the current Labour government — Ed Milliband — is as crazed a climate zealot as you can find anywhere. The British have even dynamited coal-fired power stations to be sure that nobody could ever change their minds about this Net Zero thing and try to re-start the plants.

Here from a post I did back in 2022, is a picture of the former Longannet coal plant in Fife, Scotland, getting dynamited to smithereens in 2021.

The last coal-fired electricity generation station in the UK closed in 2024. Today, the UK claims to get about 45-47% of its electricity from “renewables,” although that includes about 5-7% “biomass,” plus a small amount of hydro. The wind/solar contribution is around 35-40%. Milliband thinks he can further increase that percentage by just building more and more wind turbines and solar farms.

But unfortunately for the British, their wind and solar generation facilities seem to be subject to all going quiet at the same time, often inconveniently at the very hottest or coldest times of the year. Building more and yet more of them does not solve the problem. Some call this Britain’s “looming firm generation capacity crisis.”

So what’s the answer? How about doing the unthinkable — bring back coal!

On June 9, Andrew Montford, Director of Net Zero Watch, addressed this issue with his new Report “Thinking the Unthinkable: Coal Power and National Security.” (Full disclosure: I serve on the Board of the American affiliate of Net Zero Watch.). Here is the basic assumption underlying Andrew’s paper:

[T]he deteriorating state of the UK economy – unsustainably high electricity prices, low growth, deindustrialisation and a declining tax base – means that Net Zero and, along with it, carbon pricing, will be abandoned, no matter which party is in power.

I think that is clearly right. Reality has caught up with them. It is only a question of time until they are forced to abandon the Net Zero fantasy.

Andrew’s Report also focuses on the national security implications of unreliable electricity, with its inherent need for insecure backup from imports:

[I]mports and offshore production are both vulnerable to the actions of hostile powers, as the sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline in 2022 made clear. In this regard, the UK is horribly exposed. Nearly half of our gas supply comes from Norway. Sabotage of the Langeled pipeline, which alone brings around 20%, would be catastrophic for the UK, and would quickly lead to a civil emergency.

Is it even possible to raise the subject of coal power generation today in the UK, where that fuel has been subject to a decades-long campaign of vilification? Montford:

While such a step [i.e., reviving coal generation] was unthinkable just 12 months ago, the political landscape is moving quickly. Polling by More in Common has found that that ever-rising energy bills are causing political volatility and fragmentation. Italy and Germany have both recently announced the extension of the lives of their coal-fired power stations. As a result, new voices are being listened to. As a hint of just how far the Overton window has already moved, the Reform party’s manifesto for the Scottish elections featured a pledge to allow coal mining once again. It clear that the looming geopolitical threats to the country now mean that the time is ripe to reconsider the consensus against coal that has taken hold in the last two decades.

So all that is needed is a sufficiently imminent crisis to force the issue of coal generation back into the public conversation. The two short weeks since issuance of Andrew’s Report have brought to Britain some indicators of the dire corner it has backed itself into. Readers here probably know about the recent record-setting heat wave that has covered much of Europe, including Britain. Paul Homewood, of the Not a Lot of People Know That website, has a post on June 25, titled “No Wind? No Sun? What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” Homewood’s post includes extensive excerpts from a piece in the Telegraph from June 24 (behind paywall). The gist is that on June 23 the UK’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) had issued an emergency power supply warning, which was then withdrawn after NESO secured emergency supplies from the continent. However, obtaining the emergency imported supplies required getting a special waiver of EU export restrictions. From the Telegraph piece:

The National Energy System Operator (Neso), which manages the grid, issued a rare emergency power supply warning on Tuesday after soaring temperatures triggered a slump in solar energy, with panels struggling to work in the hot conditions. It was subsequently withdrawn after Neso secured emergency supplies from the Continent on Wednesday. Kathryn Porter, an industry consultant, said Neso had “begged the EU” to lift import trading limits which would have capped the amount of energy Britain could import. Ms Porter said the sudden easing of restrictions had allowed the UK to obtain 2.3 gigawatts (GW) of imports versus a 1.5 GW limit introduced in May, helping Britain avoid power shortages.

OK, crisis averted, for now. But Homewood reports on a few other aspects of this solution to Britain’s crunch. First, they had to buy the power from the Netherlands on a day-ahead market that was already at a high level due to the heat wave and lack of dispatchable capacity. Homewood links a Tweet from a firm called Montel Analytics as to the price: “[T]hey are paying up to €1600 per MWh for it.” €1600/MWh is equivalent to more than $2000/MWh, or more than $2.00/kWh. That will translate to a retail price of around $2.50/kWh, compared to average U.S. retail electricity prices of under $0.20/kWh.

Oh, and almost all of the imported power was generated from either natural gas or coal.

In other words, the only effect of the wind/solar generation obsession has been to drive up the cost of electricity to consumers and businesses to ridiculous levels. And, next time around, when the next wind/sun drought comes along on a hot evening, the imported power may not be available at all, and widespread blackouts could follow.

Thank you, Andrew, for getting the subject of coal-fired electricity generation back into the conversation. It’s only a question of time before this will happen.

How the Rush to Net Zero is Accelerating Britain’s Industrial Decline

It’s Toytown basic economics that the price of any commodity or service is determined by the relationship between supply and demand. The less there is of anything, the higher its price will be, depending on the level of demand. The greater the level of supply the lower the price, and thus the greater the demand and usage.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Sallust

It’s Toytown basic economics that the price of any commodity or service is determined by the relationship between supply and demand. The less there is of anything, the higher its price will be, depending on the level of demand. The greater the level of supply the lower the price, and thus the greater the demand and usage.

Nothing could exemplify that better than energy. Restricting the supply of energy whether by design or circumstance, or even elevating the price artificially with taxes and levies, is bound to inhibit demand. And that diminishes the economy.

The Telegraph has published an article by Jonathan Leake on how Net Zero has accelerated Britain’s national decline:

For Ed Miliband and Sir Keir Starmer, Net Zero is the route to clean energy, economic growth and turning the U.K. into a global green superpower.

Across the Atlantic, however, Britain’s drive for “decarbonisation” is increasingly seen as an economic experiment – one that risks tipping the U.K. from miniscule economic growth into full-scale decline.

Chris Wright, Donald Trump’s nominee for US energy secretary, has warned that Britain’s rush to ditch fossil fuels in favour of wind and solar power is causing higher prices, driving away energy-intensive businesses and contributing to Britain’s national decline.

“The U.K., although no longer part of the EU, has continued aggressive climate policies that have driven up energy prices for its citizens and industry,” he wrote in a recent report. “The once world-leading United Kingdom now has a per capita income lower than even the poorest state in the United States.”

Leake doesn’t dispute the effects of climate change or “other consequences of greenhouse gas emissions”. His main point is that a key part of Net Zero policy is to reduce energy usage, but only in Britain. How much less?

To quote the Government’s advisory Climate Change Committee: “In our Balanced Net Zero Pathway, the U.K. economy becomes much more energy efficient, with total energy demand falling by around 33% in end-use sectors between now and 2050.”

Improved efficiency – delivering more output for the same amount of fuel, or less – could help to deliver a reduction in energy consumption. Yet huge advances would be necessary to yield a reduction in consumption of a third. Many observers believe the tail will wag the dog when it comes to this target, meaning the U.K. may be forced to curtail energy use in order to hit it.

For Wright and others, slashing energy consumption by a third and still expecting growth is heresy – an economic experiment no other country has achieved, or even attempted before.

Their view – one supported by most economists – is that access to energy has historically always been directly related to prosperity. The more energy we have, the richer we will become. And if we have less, we get poorer.

Britain’s Industrial Revolution, driven by cheap and abundant coal, is proof, Wright says, of the theory. But with decline in energy usage now far advanced, it’s clear the prioritising of climate targets is having a drastic impact on Britain’s wealth and productive capacity.

In 1970, U.K. industry consumed the equivalent of 62 million tonnes of oil each year, making most of what the nation needed including energy intensive products like steel, cement and petrochemicals. Manufacturing was by far the largest sector of the economy, contributing 30.1% of total output.

Last year, manufacturing accounted for just 9% of the U.K.’s economy.

The point is that a key part of Net Zero policy is to reduce energy usage, but only in Britain. Other countries don’t matter because it’s all about the U.K. Government’s climate policy.

For example, one of the U.K.’s proudest boasts is that it has slashed emissions from more than 800 million tonnes in 1990 to just under 400 million tonnes in 2023. These figures refer to the greenhouse gases emitted within Britain’s borders, from power stations, vehicles, homes, offices and industry.

However, it excludes all the emissions generated from things we buy from abroad, including cars, clothes, steel and cement. Such “consumption emissions” have grown, from under 200 million tonnes of CO2 in 1990 to 400 million tonnes today

If you add our overseas and domestic emissions together, the overall U.K. carbon footprint is about 800 million tonnes. This is only a slight decrease from 1990 and the U.K. has paid a pretty high price to achieve it, including continuing high energy prices and increased vulnerability to global price shocks and shortages.

“The U.K. has too little production, too much consumption, too little savings and too much debt,” Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy Economics at Oxford University, wrote recently. “Perhaps not surprisingly, since it takes time for the politics to catch up with the economics, the new Labour Government is in the process of doubling down on all four of these.

“Current (and proposed) economic policy is perpetuating an unsustainable economy. What is unsustainable will not be sustained. It will have to end, probably in a series of economic crises played out into the future. The next generation will pay the price.”

Leake goes on to explain that the U.K. is not the U.S. and does not have abundant supplies of energy on its doorstep. Britain is dependent on imports.

The key conflict then is between replacing old sources of energy with new ones or simply reducing energy consumption. Britain is steadily running down its oil-refining and steel-manufacturing capacity.

For Miliband, falling energy consumption is a sign of progress rather than an ominous portent. A spokesman for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero said: “Making the U.K. a clean energy superpower is essential to end the U.K.’s dependency on insecure fossil fuel markets.”

Exactly where we are headed is therefore not clear. It’s also a moot point whether any government can survive enforcing a vision of the future with policies that seem destined to make people poorer, more immobile, colder, hungrier, and with less and less choice in the matter.

Readers may remember the irony of this pronouncement five-and-a-half years ago:

“We will be able to look back on this period – this extraordinary period – as the beginning of a new golden age for our United Kingdom.”

Boris Johnson, statement to the Commons July 25th 2019

He was right about it being an extraordinary period.

The Telegraph piece is worth reading in full.

COP29 Will Be Haunted by the Ghost of the President Yet-to-Come

Spare a thought this morning for Justin Rowlatt of the BBC as he sits down for breakfast in Baku wondering how he will spin the looming disaster of the now Trump-wrecked COP29, which begins today.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Spare a thought this morning for Justin Rowlatt of the BBC as he sits down for breakfast in Baku wondering how he will spin the looming disaster of the now Trump-wrecked COP29, which begins today. In happier days, the thought of wasting billions of dollars on free handouts, or climate reparations, as they are laughably called, would have warmed his heart. In happier days, western governments could pretend to be saving the planet by rebadging foreign aid for so-called climate projects. Few seemed to take their climate obligations more seriously than the Belgians who funded a romantic film about a green activist and a rugby-playing logger set in a rainforest. Sadly, to date, your correspondent has been unable to catch this eco-classic when the tree hugger met the hunk with the big log. The Belgians justified the movie as ‘climate finance’ because it “touches on deforestation”.

The latest COP in Azerbaijan is all about money – a massive annual trillion dollar heist planned by global elites as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. But Trump’s election has blown these plans out of the water. America’s commitment to the Paris agreement, crucial to much of this funding, will soon be ditched by Trump along with green boondoggles of every variety. Can Rowlatt and co. step up to the plate and put the best possible face on the new reality? Rarely can a BBC correspondent have faced a more difficult assignment.

David Wojick of CFACT is not sanguine about the prospects of the useful idiots covering the conference for mainstream media. “That people take this nonsense seriously speaks volumes about the unreality of the UN climate programme. But it will be great fun to watch them hit the NO WAY wall,” he says.

If all goes well at COP 29, the Italians will no longer have to save the planet one ice cream at a time. Part of their past climate aid helped an Italian retailer to open a chain of chocolate and gelato stores across Asia. This formed part of the agreement reached in Paris in 2015 that pledged $100 billion a year for climate action in the developing world. In fact, a recent survey by Reuters and Big Local News at Stanford University found that billions of dollars had been spent building new coal- and gas-fired power stations, along with airport and hotel developments. Japan is said to have provided at least $776.3 million to finance three airports including the Borg El Arab development in Egypt. The pragmatic Egyptian climate minister Mohamed Nasr noted that “people have to fly”.

The two largest climate finance contributors to date are the USA and Japan. The researchers found that Japan grants itself a great deal of latitude when it comes to defining climate finance. It provided $2.4 billion to help fund the Matarbari ultra supercritical coal-fired power station in Bangladesh. Apparently, Japan considers Matarbari a project worthy of its climate backing because it uses Japanese technology to generate more energy with less coal. If worrying about carbon dioxide is your thing, you will not be pleased to learn that according to the researchers Matarbari will produce more emissions than the entire city of San Francisco in 2019.

Desperation at the BBC is evident in pre-COP copy with arch eco-activists Matt McGrath and Georgina Rannard stating that world leaders are “hoping to rein in rising temperatures which are making deadly events like the recent floods in Spain far worse”. Note the lack of the usual ‘scientists say’ qualification to make a statement for which there is scant scientific evidence. Desperate times calls for desperate editorial measures. The luxury belief that humans control a chaotic, non-linear atmosphere and can somehow “rein in” temperatures around the world, is a political message that backs the increasingly absurd climate emergency and its death cult Net Zero solution.

Of course, a lot of silly people who claim that you can take hydrocarbons out of a modern industrial economy have gathered in Baku. There are few sillier than mad Ed Miliband, who is rushing headlong into ‘decarbonising’ the U.K.’s electricity grid within the next 60 months. He has been told that there is no reliable back up for intermittent breezes and beams except a full fleet of gas-fired power stations. Since Miliband is also banning new oil and gas exploration, he might care for a meeting with Elnur Soltanov, the Chief Executive of Azerbaijan’s COP team.

We are obliged to J. Rowlatt for reporting that Soltanov is taking the opportunity to promote the country’s burgeoning oil and gas business. It is after all essential to have some access to hydrocarbons if you are too virtuous to drill for them yourself. Or the Mad One might bump into forward planners from the Trump team. There will be plenty of gas available across the pond in the next four years with the incoming President promising to “drill baby drill”. The price may be a little higher than any domestic supply since it needs to be compressed and transported. Since the U.K. will be dealing at the top with a capitalist deal maker President, the price will need to reflect all these costs, and possibly a small premium to help assuage the seller’s conscience of having the customer over a barrel.

One can hardly blame the representatives of developing countries turning up at Baku and asking for free money for bad weather. The island states will be there in force claiming rising sea levels will sweep away their coral and sand bank homes. Again, substantial handouts will help assuage consciences. It must be hard to keep telling these fibs to halfwitted journalists and politicians when all the scientific evidence suggests that most tropical islands in the Pacific are growing by natural accretion. But no doubt the cash will be put to good use building more money-spinning beach resorts.

But there is a more serious and darker side to the climate giving game – the suggestion that it’s a form of climate colonialism. In a recent essay in Watt Up With That?, Charles Rotter noted that global financial institutions and wealthy nations dictate energy policy that prioritises carbon reduction over human development. Across Africa, electricity blackouts are common. The region’s most populous country, Nigeria, is repeatedly plunged into darkness. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have curtailed funding for oil and gas projects, while the European Investment Bank has banned support for hydrocarbon projects. Hopefully, help in providing reliable energy to developing countries for electricity, clean water and sanitation may be on its way from the U.S. Under pressure from the Biden administration, American development agencies are reported to have halted backing for overseas hydrocarbon projects. This is likely to change. As Rotter notes, forcing developing nations to rely on unreliable and expensive renewables means that wealthier countries maintain their industrial advantage.

Such sentiments about the underlying wickedness of COP will no doubt have Rowlatt choking over his organic oatmeal.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.